Sundance Film Festival

The indie-film summit known as the Sundance Film Festival began Thursday and continues for ten days through next Sunday, a week from now–although you wouldn’t know it from Park City’s mostly empty Main Street. Not that there are tumbleweeds and doleful Morricone harmonica strains, but the clogging crowds are gone along with the stretch limos bearing the Parises, Britneys, and Lindsays of yesteryear. What joy!

No doubt the economy has taken a toll. Boisterous teen revelers and obvious hangers-on are in short supply this year. Also, a lot of left-coast industry types arrived to attend weekend festivities only to depart today—a trend that’s been building for several years, regrettably shifting the media’s attention away from the second week when important awards ceremonies take place.

A third thinning factor is this year’s Obamathon. Millimeter and Digital Content Producer editor-in-chief Cynthia Wisehart is one of the fortunate few who attended the first days of Sundance, then jetted off to D.C. for Tuesday’s history-in-the-making. Which leaves Millimeter/DCP blogging chores at Sundance in the hands of yours truly. As in years past, my Mondo Sundance musings (with apologies to cult Utah filmmaker Trent Harris and his essential guidebook, Mondo Utah) will appear daily, starting today.

Stay tuned because it takes all ten days for Sundance, with its 120-plus documentary and dramatic premieres, along with countless wonderful shorts, to fully unspool. Though I must say I feel bad for filmmakers whose long-anticipated premieres fall anytime on Tuesday. This goes equally for panel discussions, ASCAP music café performances (Rachel Yamagata was terrific yesterday), scheduled meetings with prospective funders, receptions, repeat screenings—in short, the whole Tuesday schmeer.

There’s word on the street that the inauguration will be displayed on a large outdoor screen at the bottom of Main Street. If so, the weather is cooperating. There’s no fresh snow and tomorrow’s temperatures are forecast between 40-50 degrees. Spunky Main Street rival Slamdance (now in its 15th year) is suspending its Tuesday schedule to host a full-blown inauguration celebration featuring pundit and former McCain adviser Martin Eisenstadt, said to be the source of the Sarah-Palin-doesn’t-know-Africa-is-a-continent story. Sounds like a party.

Speaking of anniversaries, this is Sundance’s 25th year (22 of which I’ve attended, I’m shocked to realize). The sparseness of activity on upper Main Street–one exhibitor told me attendance is down 45% (no way to prove this), a seasoned journalist whispered that 1/3 fewer press were attending—reminds me of Sundance in pre-Olympics Park City, when narrow, slippery sidewalks in this old mining town contained mostly filmmakers in puffy down coats (de rigueur even for celebrities) hastening to cheap watering holes with the likes of Roger Ebert to discuss and debate–what else?—the low-budget indie film you, too, had just seen. Harvey Weinstein hadn’t yet been invented. Neither had swag.

OK, I’m waxing nostalgic. All things must change. But I’m reminded of how fun it all used to be by the blunt and intemperate remarks unleashed tonight after an industry screening of Tom DeCillo’s new film about the brief 54-month history of Jim Morrison and The Doors, entitled When You’re Strange.

On a shuttle bus afterwards, one experienced critic dismissed it as “the worst friggin’ piece of salami ever.” (What he actually said is similar but unprintable.) Another noted critic/programmer called it “lazy filmmaking,” then commenced swearing and said I should drop the subject or she’d lose her cool.

Meanwhile, I’d been mesmerized. DiCillo uses the latest D.I. techniques to seamlessly blend 35mm footage of Morrison in a blue tie-dyed t-shirt, barreling down highways and across a desert in an open convertible (outtakes of a short called HWY that Morrison himself had made–he got his undergraduate degree in film from UCLA) with performance and personal film clips, concocted into such a vivid, visceral ‘60s fever dream charged with politics and generational rage, that I awoke from a nap still seeing it in my mind. Much of the 35mm footage looks as if it were shot yesterday in grain-free HD–amazing! And who needs an actor, Oliver Stone, when you have the real Jim Morrison!

As writer/director of the classic Steve Buscemi parody of indie filmmaking, Living in Oblivion, which premiered at Sundance 1995, DeCillo certainly doesn’t lack for indie cred or sensibility. So why the vicious flak?

DiCillo narrates. He tells you what the times were like, who Nixon was, what Vietnam did to this country. He’s explicit and direct. He wraps up Morrison’s story by noting that unless an artist is on fire in the first place, he can’t truly burn out. It’s not subtle stuff. But I think DiCillo has made his film for the ages, for generations long after the last ‘60s longhair has died out. His narration is well-written, well-delivered and heartfelt. Meanwhile I couldn’t stop tapping my feet, the music and poetry are so compelling. And the editing is beyond inspired. Critics be damned!

And that’s what I have missed most at Sundance these past years. Art is not on fire unless it provokes shouting matches.

Read more about When You’re Strange at DiCillo’s blog.

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